"A really efficient totalitarian state would
be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their
army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be
coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task
assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda,
newspaper editors and schoolteachers...."

-- Aldous Huxley (Brave New World,
foreword to 1946 edition)

Folks
on the Internet are having a field day with Rupert Murdoch's Fox News
Network finally getting what it so richly deserves in Robert
Greenwald's recently released documentary, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War
on Journalism." At long last, the sound of a warped and twisted tree
falling in the journalism forest was not only heard, but thanks to American
Progress and MoveOn.org, was celebrated in thousands of "house parties" all
across the country.

I must
admit for a while there, I just kicked back and enjoyed it -- stretched
out every minute -- wallowed in orgiastic delight -- grinning throughout
like someone who has sex only once a year, but -- Whoop! -- tonight's the
night! Nobody in the business deserves the comeuppance of a
dressing-down more than Fox. Australian-born billionaire Murdoch and his
Fox News chairman and former Reagan/Bush adviser Roger Ailes, the Karl Rove
of cable, have been dropping their laundry and mooning the free world for
years -- steamrolling the truth, manipulating world opinion -- making a
mockery of the once revered institution of journalism.

I even
rejoiced at the news that a group of media organizations, to include
AlterNet, TrueMajority and MoveOn.org, petitioned the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) to make Fox desist from false advertising by using the
phrase "Fair and Balanced" as its trademark. Such action is long
overdue. There's nothing remotely fair or balanced in the obnoxious 24/7
stand-up comedy routine that Murdoch passes off as news...

The Real
World

But
then, I reluctantly came back to the real world. Even more reluctantly,
I realized that Fox is perhaps the more honest of US mainstream print and
electronic media. No, really. Watch and listen closely. Preening,
sanctimonious spinmeisters and wide-eyed, mini-skirted blonde bimbos wrap up
their slanted reporting by defiantly proclaiming, "Fox News -- Fair and
Balanced." Then they add a smirking caveat -- "As Always..."

Can't
argue with that. As always, Fox has never pretended to be anything
other than fiercely biased toward the hard right, and has been not only a
strident supporter and protector of George W. Bush since his 2000 selection,
but -- with the help of those like Matt Drudge -- continues to be his
partner in crime.

Think
about it. Think about the brazen Fox News attack on the Clinton
administration in January 2001 as power changed hands and the feral Karl
Rove "marked" his territory with the first of many vicious leaks to the
media -- a strategy that continues to be the modus operandi of the
Bush regime today. White House offices trashed, Rove said. Air Force One
stripped clean. Fox news director Brit Hume, along with anchor Tony Snow
and correspondent "Campaign" Carl Cameron, worked round the
clock, determined to make Bill and Hillary Clinton's legacy one of looting
and vandalism -- a final degradation for the man who refused to die no
matter how many times they killed him.

Within
two weeks, officials at Andrews Air Force Base had debunked the Air Force
One charges, and the General Services Administration found that there had
been no vandalism, but it would be mid-May before Snow would concede on
camera that, "Rumors to the contrary, the GSA says the Clinton
administration did not trash the White House or despoil Air Force
One...Okay, I'm sorry..." Snow grinned, "the ex-president's pals have a
legitimate beef."

Hume has
yet to weigh in on the matter or apologize for falsely reporting that the
Clintons had taken the plane's "porcelain, china...silverware and even the
salt and pepper shakers." And Cameron stood his ground. He refused to
accept the GSA investigation, calling it merely a "cursory inspection" and
blustered, "As for whether or not there was vandalism, it has not been
proved or, for that matter, disproven..."

A
Different Journalistic World

We live
in a vastly different journalistic world than the one outlined by Walter
Williams, the first dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, in his
Journalist's Creed
in 1908, or for that matter, the one presented to me in journalism classes
more than two decades ago. Bias was anathema to any self-respecting
reporter, and we believed -- fervently believed -- that journalism
was such a noble calling that no one would dare besmirch it with rampant
anonymous sources or unchecked facts. But "bias" long ago fell by the
wayside; journalism is now totalitarian propaganda driven by corporate
agenda. Today's journalism world is unfriendly, mean-spirited, partisan --
and destructive.

It's a
world of NBC and Tim Russert, who opened the Sept. 13, 2000 Hillary
Clinton/Rick Lazio debate with a blatant attempt to rattle Clinton by
demanding -- "would you care to apologize to the American people for lying
about the vast, right-wing conspiracy you said was out to get your husband?
Do you," Russert asked, smugly certain that he had backed the bitch into a
corner, "regret misleading the American people?"

And a
world of CBS and Dan Rather who, in the marching-band lead-up to
international slaughter, destroyed in one fell swoop any shred of
credibility he will ever have as a serious journalist. I can no longer
"hear" Rather when he speaks. Any time Rather opens his mouth, I am
reminded of his remarks on CNN's Larry King program, to wit..."Bush is my
president. Whatever he tells me to do, I'll just salute, line up behind him
and say 'Yes Sir!" Then, taking journalistic absurdity to new heights,
Rather -- blinking back patriotic tears -- smartly saluted!

It's a
crazy, Orwellian world of Fox nemesis CNN, just one of the many voices of
Time Warner, the world's largest media company. CNN also hides its covert
news censorship and selective bias behind the unsubstantiated slogan: "CNN
-- the Most Trusted Name In News," and the highly improbable claim that
"More Americans trust CNN than any other news network..."

The
easily cowed CNN is far more likable than Fox. Like Fox, CNN is not
only unquestionably loyal to Bush, but is proud to be his "nanny," jealously
protecting him from criticism and bad press. Earlier this month, a petulant
Bush stomped out of a press briefing when reporters asked him about his
relationship with the odious "Kenny Boy" Lay, and left White House spokesman
Scott McClellan standing there with his bare face hanging out.

Amazing
news. However, CNN, who usually hangs onto Bush's every word, saw fit
to air ONLY the Scott McClellan portion of the briefing. With the possible
exception of the fabulous
Capital Hill Blue, censorship
of this presidential temper tantrum appears to be universal. If proof is
needed that the mainstream US media shamelessly protects this totally
worthless, morally-impaired warmonger -- this is it.

And it's
a world where a journalist like Time Magazine's Margaret Carlson
still had her job after proudly making a snickering admission that the
media's tacit lemming agreement to trash, and to ultimately destroy, Vice
President Al Gore in the run-up to the 2000 election was because it was
"easier than having to work to dig out stuff from George Bush's past" --
and, by golly -- because "it was so darn much FUN..."

Of
course such mindless cruelty is nothing new in journalism's "embedded"
world. Since the cold war, US regimes have worked tirelessly both within
and through the media to condition American citizens to believe whatever is
on their newsstands or beamed into their living rooms. Americans no longer
question whether their government represents them. They do not question why
members of their watchdog media no longer patrol the perimeters of
democracy, but sit happily on one branch of one tree -- chirping like
mockingbirds...

The
Media's Great Adventure

A
conscious decision had to have been made at the highest
media-military-industrial corporate levels to embark upon this bloody
adventure of world conquest. With profits spreading as far as the eye could
see, it's delusionary to imagine the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How
of Walter Williams' journalism even creating a blip on the screens
of Murdoch's sprawling five-continent News Corp., General Electric (NBC,
CNBC, MSNBC), Viacom (CBS, UPN), Time Warner (CNN) or Walt Disney (ABC).

Journalists who considered themselves trustees for the public, who refused
to betray that trust by suppressing the news were quickly discredited as
paranoid conspiracy theorists and were either marginalized or axed
outright. Author Michelle Goldberg, in her analysis of the book,
Into the Buzzsaw, a compilation of horror stories of 18 journalists who
dared to buck the corporate media system, says, "There's something of an
X-Files feel to a lot of these stories, though not in the way that
condescending guardians of official truth think. Rather, their surreal
feeling comes from the first-person experiences of people finding the
institutions they've served all their lives suddenly turning on them."

When
profits are threatened, corporate parents have a tendency to eat their
young. Goldberg says once a journalist has been tossed out of the inner
circle, "anything they write can be smeared as sour grapes or mere ranting.
The media has already branded them unreliable, so their charges are
extremely unlikely to be taken seriously."

Ego-driven media such as Fox and CNN, however, were happy to cast their
grins to the wind and become carney barkers whose job was to convince a
doubting public that there was no reality beyond the star-spangled images on
their TV screens. The now
infamous
Fox memos warned correspondents to avoid "whining" anti-war protesters
and to not air US bombs killing Iraqi civilians. No problem. Most
journalists, eager to add "war correspondent" to their resumes, were happy
to create a war -- just to cover it.

In a
"fair and balanced" revelation during the March 28 Fox News Sunday, Hume
echoed defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's earlier remarks -- "...if
Washington D.C. were the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like
215 murders a month...There's going to be violence in a big city," Hume
shrugged, and went on to grump that critics of President Bush -- including
families of American soldiers killed in his Iraq war -- should "just get
over it..."

Even
with their resounding fall from grace, it gives me no pleasure to say our
state-controlled media brought it upon themselves by becoming Bush
administration whores. If Greenwald's "Outfoxed" does nothing else, it at
least is prompting a national debate on the state of our media and the
price American citizens are paying for failing to demand answers to
journalism's five W's and one H.

PBS--I
wouldn't sell my integrity for all the money in the world. Not for a
hundred million, billion, trillion dollars!

FOX--Then
you're crazy!

CNN--I
know you are but what am I?

ABC--You're
a spineless Fox wannabe!

CBS--I
know you are but what am I?

NBC--You're
an idiot!

PRINT
MEDIA--I
know you are but what am I?

WEEKLY
STANDARD, NEWSMAX, FREE REPUBLIC--You're
a slimy traitor!

RUSH
LIMBAUGH, SEAN HANNITY, ANN COULTER--
I know you are but what am I? I know you are but what am I? I know you are
but what am I?

WE THE
PEOPLE--What
about the lies Bush told us? Why are more than 900 of our
young people dead; tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghans dead?
When will you stop the madness? Who is
responsible for this obscenity? Where is the outrage?
How could you allow this to happen?

BILL
O'REILLY--SHUT
UP! JUST SHUT UUUUP!!

Sheila Samples
is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former US Army Public Information
Officer. She is a proud member of the Order of Saint Barbara -- the Field
Artillery's Patron Saint. She will accept praise and atta-boys at:
rsamples@sirinet.net.
Complaints and death threats should be directed to her cousin, Junior
Samples, at BR-549.